The Book of Disquiet (Penguin Classics)

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• ISBN13: 9780141183046
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Description

Fernando Pessoa was many writers in one. The Portuguese author attributed his work to literary alter egos that he called "heteronyms," each of which had a fully developed identity. When Pessoa died, he left behind a trunk filled with disorderly scraps of unpublished poems and unfinished works, among which was The Book of Disquiet. Published for the first time some fifty years after his death, this unique collection of short, aphoristic paragraphs comprises the "autobiography" of Bernardo Soares, one of Pessoa's alternate selves. Part intimate diary, part prose poetry, part descriptive narrative, captivatingly translated by Richard Zenith, The Book of Disquiet is one of the greatest works of the twentieth century.

Edited and Translated with an Introduction by Richard Zenith

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Customer Reviews

Fernando Pessoa, literary masterpiece!
Fernando Pessoa should be mandatory reading for World Literature classes.
Thru his writings he courageously, poetically and beautifully expresses what most of us feel uncomfortable with, let alone ponder or rip apart - the deep recesses of our minds and the not so pleasant frailties of the human soul. Carving from within and expressing his deepest feelings with outstanding poetic beauty, Pessoa loved life enough to leave us this (and other) outstanding literary legacies. Thru them, forever, he remains eternal, stunning us with the uniqueness of his soul.

Fernando...thank you for your brilliant mind, heart and for passionately living, writing and loving the city you and I shared from birth, the "muse" that forever inspired us both = beautiful Lisbon!

Fernando Pessoa was an exquisite hard to find gem, and totally Portuguese,to this day he still shyies away from the spotlight, yet deserving the notoriety of a MAJOR writer. This is mandatory reading for the masses....

2010-06-03 | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 5

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A great book
I bought this item and was not displeased. The condition of the book was great and it arrived within the stated arrival time.

The book itself is incredible. I would recommend it to anyone who likes creative writing or philosophy, especially Dostoyevsky.

2010-05-20 | autocrat91 (Rockford IL) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 5

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Not so hard to put down
Okay, so I've read only 50 pages or so, and I'm finding the book very easy to put down, and I'm still waiting for him to turn a corner (as another reviewer puts it) and totally change his miserable attitude. As far as I can tell so far, this is just Pessoa scribbling all his depressing thoughts in a journal--no plot OR poetry so far that I can detect, and I'm a lover of modern poetry. I am going to finish it though, just to see if it will change my life, as so many claim it will, but why do I have a sneaking suspicion that it's going to be one big wallow through all 500 pages?

2010-02-24 | greader (Spain) | Helpful Votes: 1 | Rating: 1

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Philosophy as Poetry for the Mind ...
Considering my great love of philosophy, it's no wonder a friend recommended this book to me. Pessoa takes all the passionate techniques of fiction and poetry writing and paints, in vivid detail, a journey into the deepest depth of alienation.

Written in journal style, here we have the distillation of every single emotion possible. While admitting to a very deliberate non-life, Pessoa, a self-proclaimed prisoner of tedium, somehow captures all of the subtle and extraordinarily painful nuances of living -- detached, self-deprecating, opinionated, at times pompous and pretentious, yet we can feel Pessoa as he deconstructs his own soul and in reflection deconstructs humanity.

Vivid imagery, poetic prose, and a dire and lamentable viewpoint, this book stirs every emotion, stirs every thought to the logical and illogical at the same time. His musings address a wide variety of topics from love, politics, language, and writing to the day-to-day drudgery of a job, world travel, insomnia, self-doubt, and dreamy landscapes. Truth. What this book expresses is truth -- fitful, sleepless, a waling nightmare -- this is the truth of life exposed to its most intimate layers of grief and suffering. The writing, lucid contemplation at one turn and stream of consciousness at the next, is poetic in its rhythm yet cruel and villainous in its bite.

This book is Existentialism at is finest.

2009-04-11 | Cheryl Anne Gardner (USA) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 5

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'absurdly' overrated --or, "An existential masterpiece" . . .
Sure to become a part of the ever growing existentialist canon, Pessoa's resurrected, unpublished manuscripts make their appearance here for the first time in English. The platitudes that constitute the majority of the text are banal in the main, comically Schopenhauerian the rest of the time. This reviewer would put zero stars if he could, but amazon does not allow it, and it happens to be slightly more competent than average, as far as these things go --nearly Dostoevsky-ish in bits and flashes.

The Book of Disquiet -- now a penguin 'classic', peddled to devotees of "the bourgeois philosophy". An atavistic triumph for Stalinist literary criticism the world over.

2009-01-16 | Helpful Votes: 3 | Rating: 2

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A Little Larger Than the Entire Universe: Selected Poems (Penguin Classics)

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• ISBN13: 9780143039556
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Description

Writing obsessively in French, English, and Portuguese, Fernando Pessoa left a prodigious body of work, much of it under "heteronyms"—fully fleshed alter egos with startlingly different styles and points of view. Offering a unique sampling of all his most famous voices, this collection features poems that have never before been translated alongside many originally composed in English. In addition to such major works as "Maritime Ode of Campos" and his Goethe-inspired Faust, written in blank verse, there are several stunning poems that have only come to light in the last five years. Selected and translated by leading Pessoa scholar Richard Zenith, this is the finest introduction available to the breadth of Pessoa’s genius.

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Customer Reviews

Universe Expansion
Always looking for books that will expand my universe I must say the books by this author fit the bill nicely. The title says it all. We are released from our limitations to the extent we bring other great thinkers and their thoughts and ideas into our life. Look inside,read a page,reflect and you will want to have a copy to expand your universe too.

2009-04-13 | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 5

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Life changes when you read Pessoa...
This is the poetry I long to read everything I pick up a book of poetry. I really can't stand American poetry (Lowell, Creeley, Merwin, especially). There is something overly Eastern-Ivy-school Pompous or plain irrelevant about their work. It is very difficult to penetrate their writings and I found it rarely rewarding when I understood their works - or whatever I understood.... They write, from what I have gleaned, without their hearts and overburden their writings with mind, intellect, a callous intelligence.

Pessoa, like Neruda, Hernandez, Lorca and other Iberian/Latin American poets write with a genuine simplicity and beauty. In translation, there is feeling, depth, philosophy and simplicity - which is what I enjoy, what edifies me. I want layers and this wonderful collection has layers. Whether writing as himself or as his 'alter-egos', Pessoa is the great idyllic poet, the great poet of resignation, weariness, tenderness, melancholy and withdrawal, viewing the world from his various abodes of personality.

Maybe there is a time and place for American poetry of the twentieth century - I much prefer the nineteenth century giant, Walt Whitman (who heavily inspired Pessoa, Neruda and other Portuguese/Spanish poets). At this point, a book like this is a boon, making poetry accessible, beauty available as opposed to being imprisoned in Ivy-tower constructions. (As a side note, Pessoa never graduated from a university - he attended a few courses and continued his education through personal studies... highly admirable.)

Discover this great-but-little-known-genius. His "Book of Disquiet" is the prose version of his poetry, the same philosophy, same beauty, the same melancholy transposed into a quasi-journal narrative. Your life will certainly be changed.

2008-06-11 | Buchlieber (Niagara Region, ON) | Helpful Votes: 7 | Rating: 5

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sometimes sad, sometimes scary, but always stunning...
The verses in this selection are hideously delicious and entertainingly sad. Pessoa is great. As W. S. Merwin put it, there's nobody like him - well, on earth.

Some may complain that Richard Zenith's translation is too colloquial, but who knows, probably this is the way the original is.

Buy this book and read The Book of Disquiet (Penguin Classics). It's a life-changing expereince.

2007-07-14 | Helpful Votes: 4 | Rating: 4

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Fernando Pessoa and Co.: Selected Poems

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• ISBN13: 9780802136275
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Description

Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935) - a poet who lived most his life in Lisbon, Portugal, and who died in obscurity there - has in recent years gained international recognition as one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century. Now Richard Zenith has collected in a single volume all the major poetry of "one of the most extraordinary poetic talents the century has produced" (Microsoft Network's Reading Forum). Fernando Pessoa was as much a creator of personas as he was of poetry, prose, and criticism. He wrote under numerous "heteronyms," literary alter egos with fully fleshed identities and writing styles, who supported and criticized each other's work in the margins of his drafts and in the literary journals of the time. From spare minimalism to a revolutionary exuberance that recalls Leaves of Grass, Pessoa's oeuvre was radically new and anticipated contemporary literary concerns to an unnerving degree. The first comprehensive edition of Pessoa's poetry in the English language, Fernando Pessoa & Co. is a work of extraordinary depth and poetic precision. "Zenith's selection of Pessoa is a beautiful one-volume course in the soul of the twentieth century." -- Booklist

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Customer Reviews

VISIONAIRE
" The poet is a faker
Who's so good at his act
He even fakes the pain
Of pain he feels in fact "

As a Portuguese native I am, I must say that Fernando Pessoa was not only a writer, but is to this day a myth, be it in Portugal or abroad. One that thinks that Pessoa "has more name than merit" (as someone said some reviews before) isn't to blame, since he's not Portuguese and so he cannot even imagine what is to read and UNDERSTAND Pessoa's thoughts and poems in Portuguese. To read Pessoa in English or other non-portuguese language would be something like reading Walt Whitman in Portuguese (which would be, in fact, MUCH SIMPLER TO TRANSLATE, since there's no english word that cannot be translated into any other language, unlike Portuguese who has several): the essential (that is : THE SPIRIT AND MANERISM OF THE ORIGINAL LANGUAGE) would be lost.
I strongly advise anyone into poetry and visionarism or out of time characters to check out Pessoa. It will be a life long discovery, that's for sure.

2006-04-29 | Johnnyboy (coimbra,portugal) | Helpful Votes: 1 | Rating: 5

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Alberto Caeiro.....
Note: This is part of a critical essay I wrote, which is to be found online at: idol.2ya.com

I have no ambitions and no desires.
To be a poet is not my ambition,
It's my way of being alone.


--Alberto Caeiro: 'The Keeper of Sheep'

Alberto Caeiro is Pessoa's first great heteronym. Caeiro is perhaps my favorite heteronym of the three; although, it is true, I recognize Alvaro de Campos poetic achievement as superior-- Caeiro is nonetheless the most endearing.

The best summarization of Caeiro is given by Pessoa himself: "He sees things with the eyes only, not with the mind. He does not let any thoughts arise when he looks at a flower...the only thing a stone tells him is that it has nothing at all to tell him...this way of looking at a stone may be described as the totally unpoetic way of looking at it. The stupendous fact about Caeiro is that out of this sentiment, or rather, absense of sentiment, he makes poetry."

In a letter written to his friend Adolfo Casais Monteiro, Pessoa described the birth of this heteronym: "[It] was March 8th 1914--I approached a high chest of drawers, and, taking a sheet of paper, I began to write, standing up, as I always write whenever I can. And I wrote thirty or so poems at a stroke in a kind of ecstatic trance, the nature of which I will not be able to define to you. It was the day of triumph in my life and I shall never succeed in living another like that. I opened with the title 'The Keeper of the Flock' ('O Guardador de Rebanhos'); and what followed was that someone emerged from within me, and whom I christened that very moment Alberto Caeiro. Forgive me for the absurdity of the following sentence: my master emerged from within me."


What makes Caeiro such an original poet is the manner he apprehends reality. He does not question anything whatsoever; he calmly accepts the world as it is. Caeiro is indeed a child of sorts: the recurrent themes, as a critic notes, to be found in nearly all Caeiro's poems are wide-eyed child-like wonder at the infinite variety of nature. He is free of metaphysical entanglements (as Campos and Pessoa himself are). Central to his world-view is the idea that in the world around us, all is surface: things are precisely what they seem, there is no hidden meaning anywhere.

He manages thus to free himself from the anxieties that batter his peers; for Caeiro ''things simply exist and we have no right to credit them with more than that.'' Our unhappiness, he tells us, springs from our unwillingness to limit our horizons. Caeiro in this sense is wise: he attains happiness by not questioning, and by thus avoiding doubts and uncertainties.

For Caeiro apprehended reality solely through his eyes, through his senses. What he teaches us is that if we want to be happy we ought to do the same. Octavio Paz called him 'the innocent poet'; true, he is innocent by our standards, and yet: does not his wisdom--experience-- consist precisely in his 'innocence'? Paz made a shrewd remark on the heteronyms: "In each are particles of negation or unreality. Reis believes in form, Campos in sensation, Pessoa in symbols. Caeiro doesn't believe in anything. He exists."

Caeiro is a wonderful invention; is there a poet before him who thinks, or rather, sees as he does? Poetry before Caeiro was essentially interpretative; what poets did was to offer us an interpretation of their perceived surroundings; Caeiro does not do this: instead, he attempts to communicate his senses, his feelings to us, without any interpretation whatsoever.

Caeiro teaches us to apprehend Nature differently; he asks of us, simply, to see what is before us. Poets before him would have made use of intricate metaphors to describe what was before them; not so Caeiro: his self-appointed task is to bring these objects to the reader's attention, as directly and simply as possible. Caeiro sought a direct experience of the objects before him.

It does not surprise us that Caeiro has been called an anti-intellectual, anti-Romantic, anti-subjectivist, anti-metaphysical...an anti-poet, by critics; Caeiro simply--is. He is in this sense very unlike his creator Fernando Pessoa: Pessoa was besieged by metaphysical uncertainties; these were, to a large extent, the cause of his unhappiness; not so Caeiro: his attitude is decidedly anti-metaphysical; he avoided uncertainties precisely by clinging single-mindedly to a certainty: his belief that there is no meaning behind things. Things simply--are.

Caeiro represents a primal vision of reality, of things. He is the pagan incarnate. Indeed Caeiro, Richard Zenith tells us, was not simply a pagan but 'paganism itself'.

The critic Jane M. Sheets, sees the insurgence of Caeiro--who was Pessoa's first heteronym-- as essential in founding the later poetic personas: "By means of this artless yet affirmative anti-poet, Caeiro, a short-lived but vital member of his coterie, Pessoa acquired the base of an experienced and universal poetic vision. After Caeiro's tenets had been established, the avowedly poetic voices of Campos, Reis and Pessoa himself spoke with greater assurance."

2005-03-03 | erikmartin (USA) | Helpful Votes: 1 | Rating: 5

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From a Portuguease reader
I've read many of Pessoa's works and studied him at school. I remenber that after studying some very weel-know poets we reached Pessoa. I also remenber and i'll possibly never forget that after reading some of his poems i just exclaimed out loud "Ei, este gajo e um genio"-"ohh, this guy's a genious".
I write poetry for some years now and i'm always very critic about it. But Pessoa just seems to be ahead of our own critic, sometimes wondering in our own mind, How does he do that !?
Someone hear in Amazon was surprised by the reviews posted here and asked "Is he really that good, or is the translation not so good" Then he just asked if some portuguease reader could clarify it. Well i am portuguease and i tell you he is really that good or even better.
I try the best i can to be objective in my reviews but when we talk about Pessoa we talk about emotions and feelings. After all who can be indifferent to the work that some call the most beatifull writing in the world (Jean-Pierre Thibaudat) and others remember it as the most inspiring author of our time! If i have to be objective i shall say his poems gives me a shiver in my spine...his prose: a moment of silence with my innerself.
About coloquial language, at least the portuguese original texts are not, mostly if you compare them with other famous portuguese poets like Camoes or Bocage.
As to Caeiro`s poetry and other others heteronyms, it is simply his need to see things in a different perpective.
This is a man that recognized himself to have sacrificed his live, his soul, his hapinnes and his mental health to be remenbered, just so that someone, even if only a single person, would remember him. And here he is now...and here we are with him.
Pessoa is that kind of author that doesn?t carries his heart at his mouth and his cause at his pen, this is a very mental experience, a reflexion on basic feelings and senses, such a deep vision on subjectivism that just a man that baunces between the thin line of genious and madness would achieve.
It astonishes...

2004-04-12 (portugal) | Helpful Votes: 4 | Rating: 5

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Shoddy translation
I don't speak Portuguese, but I've read Pessoa in Italian translation, and I consider his poetry remarkably powerful. I would think that, based on linguistic similarities, Italian translations in general would be more faithful to the original Portuguese than English would be.
I bought this edition of Pessoa, translated by Richard Zenith, and was so terribly disappointed by the shoddiness of the translation that I was forced to write this review to defend Pessoa. Zenith fails miserably in conveying the sheer haunting power of Pessoa. Zenith's English is too colloquial for the task. Portuguese is not like Russian or Arabic: one would have to work fairly hard to make a translation this bad; or be awfully enamored of one's own poetical abilities, instead of being a faithful conduit of the original language.
You ought to read Pessoa, but find a better translation.

2003-08-16 | Helpful Votes: 12 | Rating: 1

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Four heads are better than one
Just being himself wasn't good enough for Fernando Pessoa, so he divided himself into four distinct, invented personalities ("heteronyms") and wrote poetry from the perspective and in the style of each of them. This in itself is a remarkable feat of literary imagination.

The poetry itself (well, this translation of it) is startling. It's direct and plain-spoken for the most part, even allowing for the personality differences. It may look un-poetic, or even awkward, at first reading. But it sticks. Days after reading, you may find lines and phrases of Pessoa & Co. springing up spontaneously in your head, just because they're so sharp and to the point. Getting to know this multitudinous poet is an invigorating experience. Try it yourself.

2001-03-16 (Prague, Czech Republic) | Helpful Votes: 11 | Rating: 5

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The Selected Prose of Fernando Pessoa

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• ISBN13: 9780802139146
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Description

The Washington Post Book World has written that Fernando Pessoa was "Portugal's greatest writer of the twentieth century [though] some critics would even leave off that last qualifying phrase" and "one of the most appealing European modernists, equal in command and range to his contemporaries Rilke and Mandelstam." The Selected Prose of Fernando Pessoa, a Los Angeles Times Best Book of 2001, spans playful philosophical inquiry, Platonic dialogue, and bitter intellectual scrapping between Pessoa and his many literary alter egos ("heteronyms"). The heteronyms launch movements and write manifestos, and one of them attempts to break up Pessoa's only known romantic relationship. Also included is a generous selection from Pessoa's masterpiece, The Book of Disquiet, freshly translated by Richard Zenith from newly discovered materials. The Selected Prose of Fernando Pessoa is an important record of a crucial part of the literary canon. "Zenith's selection is beautifully translated, compact while appropriately diverse." -- Benjamin Kunkel, Los Angeles Times "[Pessoa] is one of those writers as addictive, and endearing, as Borges and Calvino." -- Michael Dirda, The Washington Post Book World

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Customer Reviews

Notes of a genius
This book is full of genius and madness, which are nearly indistinguishable from one another. Like Kafka, Pessoa stands above his peers for his profound sense of humanity. He is also as singular as Kafka. Pessoa is a mystery, and his notes and letters further illustrate this. I am sorry that he died before the world would honor him as one of the Twentieth Century's greatest writers. However, Pessoa was well aware of his genius and the admiration of the world would have done nothing to convince him of his worth. He was already convinced!
Pessoa published little during his lifetime, but it was because he never submitted much of his work for publication. Apparetnly, the Portugese publishers still haven't published all of his works, either, and that is a shame.
One thing that stands out about this book is that Pessoa does not engage in any of the posturing that one might find in the works of other writers convinced of their genius. One senses that Pessoa considers his genius not in boast, but as if it were as unavoidable as his own face. It is fact to him; he cannot change it. His is a sad genius, not a violent genius. But do not pity him; he knew what he was doing. Pessoa was a man who knew what it meant to be a writer (that is, a perpetual other, an individual who can describe the world because he stands apart from it).
Pessoa is a wonder. Buy this book. I only wish it were the "Collected Prose" of Pessoa rather than the "Selected Prose."

One more note, if you are interested in Portugese literature you must read Anotnio Lobo Antunes, also published by Grove Press. A few of his works have been also translated by Richard Zenith (to whom I am grateful for his translations). If you like madness, madness in the Faulknerian sense, then you will love Lobo Antunes.

2001-11-08 | Helpful Votes: 18 | Rating: 5

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An indispensable addition to the Pessoa oeuvre in English
Richard Zenith is my favourite translator of Pessoa; in this collection, he brings the insight and perspective he brought to his transcendant "Pessoa & Co." and "Book of Disquietude." The puckish nature of Pessoa's heteronym project is put into sharp relief: those who know only Pessoa/Soares may have thought the subsumption into heteronymology a sad affaire.

This collection complicates and deepens that perspective, with selections ranging from the whole of Pessoa's life, from the childhood Alexander Search to the elderly and Stoic Baron of Tieve, yet remains (as Pessoa remains) wholly delightful and charming. A Maria José even appears, in a letter "From A Hunchbacked Girl To A Metalworker" (a heartbreaking letter, I may add). Pessoa's possibly affected eccentricities is in full evidence here: witness the "Riddle Of The Stars," a kind of proto-"Changing Light At Sandover," wherein Pessoa receives otherworldly communiqués via automatic writing and the spirits exhort him repeatedly to lose his virginity. Other kicks: his "static drama" "O Marinhero" and Alvaro de Campos' "Ultimatum," where he personally attacks everyone responsible for World War I (and I mean, _everyone_).

Zenith's notes are indispensable (though he peculiarly abandons his "Disquietude" for "Disquiet," and chooses American English as his idiom). All in all, a welcome addition to the Pessoan archive in English, and a breathtaking array of further complications.

2001-08-23 (Cormorant Island) | Helpful Votes: 11 | Rating: 5

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Poems of Fernando Pessoa

Description

anthology ed & tr Edwin Honig & Susan M. Brown

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Customer Reviews

dull and duller
This man is verbose and totally obsessed by his own emotional turmoil in everyday living.
It wouldn't be so bad except he really has little to say, and that he does in a completely
unremarkable way. Two thumbs down, ... unless you are a Cancer and share his condition.

2010-01-27 (Fairlee, VT USA) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 1

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Fernando Pessoa
Fernando Pessoa is surely the most important 20th century Portuguese poet. The critic Harold Bloom considers Fernando Pessoa (along with Pablo Neruda) the "most representative" poet of the 20th century. This is a considerable feat if one considers other 20th century poets like: T.S. Eliot, Rilke, Valery, Yeats, Lorca etc.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez considers Neruda the "best poet of the 20th century, in any language." I highly admire Neruda, but Pessoa has done more for me, has influenced me much more than has Neruda. Pessoa's invention of several "selves" is a feat of originality without precedent.

Perhaps what most characterizes Pessoa is his strangeness. His strangeness is partly explained by his own life: Pessoa has been called "the man who never was." This is accurate: he is one of the most solitary literary geniuses of modern times. This sense of estrangement is all-pervasive in most of his poems.

The Noble Laureate Gao Xinjiang recently called Pessoa "the most profound poet of the 20th century." I concur with him. ---

Concerning this selection: I suggest the reader buy both the Zenith and Hong translations. It would be best ofcourse if one read his poetry in the original Portuguese. P.S: (Pessoa's complete poems can be found online, in both English, Spanish & Portuguese...)

2005-03-03 | erikmartin (USA) | Helpful Votes: 17 | Rating: 5

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Genius and Madness from the Portuguese
It's telling of the miserable state and status of the Portuguese -- "a brilliance lacking luster" -- that only an enlightened few are privileged to know (posthumously) that Pessoa ranks among the greatest writers of recent centuries. (Yes.) Become one of the privileged few to enter Pessoa's universe, and make sure it's initially through the translations of Honig and Brown.

2003-04-10 (Urban Los Angeles) | Helpful Votes: 6 | Rating: 5

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Moving
Accessable modern poetry; depressing, surreal, with alot of sach-religious overtones.

2000-01-04 | freshroastedbanjokill | Helpful Votes: 3 | Rating: 4

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fabulous
Do yourselves a favour and read the unforgettable poems of the century's least acknowledged, but greatest, poet.

1999-02-07 | Helpful Votes: 13 | Rating: 5

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Education Of The Stoic, The

Description

The recent discovery of the Portuguese writer Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935) is reminiscent of the discovery of Kafka at mid-century. Like Kafka, Pessoa left his work in disarray, much of it to be published only posthumously. And Pessoa has fast become a literary icon of postmodernism, as Kafka is of modernism. Pessoa is best known for his unique practice of writing under "heteronyms," distinct personalities whom Pessoa supplied with differing biographies, literary influences, even horoscopes; and each of whom generated radically different texts. Pessoa was a multitude of authors.

Since its publication in 1998, Exact Change’s edition of Pessoa’s major prose work, The Book of Disquiet, has been one of its best-selling titles, and extensive articles on Pessoa have appeared in the New York Times Book Review, New York Review of Books, Los Angeles Times Book Review, Voice Literary Supplement, and Washington Post. But the discovery continues. In 1999, translator Richard Zenith made a new find in the Pessoa archive in Lisbon: a group of prose writings by a previously unknown heteronym, the "Baron of Teive." The Portuguese volume of these writings has been received by scholars as a crucial piece of the puzzle that is Pessoa’s oeuvre. The Education of the Stoic is the unique work left by the Baron of Teive, who, after destroying all his previous literary attempts and before destroying himself, explains "the impossibility of producing superior art." It is the dark companion piece to The Book of Disquiet. This is its first publication in English. There are in Pessoa echoes of Beckett’s exquisite boredom; the dark imaginings of Baudelaire (whom he loved); Melville’s evasive confidence man; the dreamscapes of Borges... --Village Voice Literary Supplement Anglomanic, myopic, courteous, elusive, dressed in black, reticent and familiar, the cosmopolitan who preaches nationalism, "the solemn investigator of useless things," the humorist who never smiles and makes our blood run cold, the inventor of other poets and self-destroyer, the author of paradoxes clear as water, and like water, dizzying: "to pretend is to know oneself," the mysterious one who doesn’t cultivate mystery, mysterious as the moon at noon, the taciturn ghost of the Portuguese midday--who is Pessoa?" --Octavio Paz By Fernando Pessoa.

Translated by Richard Zenith.

Afterword by Antonio Tabucchi. Paperback, 6 x 8 in. / 128 pgs

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